“This research shows that the brain activation is able to predict what music is going to become popular two or three years from now,” said Stanford University marketing professor Baba Shiv, who studies decision-making but wasn’t involved in the project. “We have to wake up to the notion that these instinctual brain functions can have predictive value.”

According to police, the woman said she is highly allergic to peanuts and that she believed putting peanut butter on a bill sent to her husband was an attempt to harm her.

Robert Sayegh was on a Delta Airlines carrier flight home from his cousin’s wedding in Kansas City when he said a flight attendant overheard him complaining about a 45-minute delay to a fellow passenger.

“It’s ridiculous and embarrassing,” the television producer and children’s book author said this morning from his home in Brooklyn. “I was just kind of talking to the guy sitting next to me. I said ‘What is taking so long?’ I said “What the ‘F’ is going on?’ ” Sayegh said. “I could see if I directed it at (the flight attendant), but I didn’t even speak to him.”

“IT’S LIKE AN INSECT INFESTATION”

In recent months hackers have broken into the SecurID tokens used by millions of people, targeting data from defense contractors Lockheed Martin, L3 and almost certainly others; launched a sophisticated strike on the International Monetary Fund; and breached digital barriers to grab account information from Sony, Google, Citigroup and a long list of others.

The latest high-profile victims were the public websites of the CIA and the U.S. Senate – whose committees are drafting legislation to improve coordination of cyber defenses.

Terabytes of data are flying out the door, and billions of dollars are lost in remediation costs and reputational harm, government and private security experts said in interviews. The head of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command, General Keith Alexander, has estimated that Pentagon computer systems are probed by would-be assailants 250,000 times each hour.

Bangkok, Thailand. Just fourteen years ago, the Sathorn Unique skyscraper was being built, destined to become one of the city’s fanciest residential addresses. Now, it is an abandoned building. Never completed, it remains as yet another “ghost tower” of Bangkok. A tangle of trees and vines are beginning to take over the lighter parts of this monolith, such as the four storey archways and romanesque feature columns. Amazingly, this building is located in the central area of one of the worlds largest cities.

❒ Is Iodine-131 Killing Babies In Philly?

A researcher says the death rate among babies is up 48 percent since Iodine-131 was found in Philadelphia’s drinking water

Joseph Mangano is is the executive director of the Radiation And Public Health Project in New York, which is made of up scientists and health professionals.

there has been a recent spike, in infant deaths in Philadelphia, and Mangano says radioactive levels, in our water could be to blame.

After the explosion at the Fukushima power plant in Japan, radiation circled the globe, all the way to Pennsylvania.

About a month, after the disaster, radiation levels spiked, in our water, at three Philadelphia facilities.

Mangano said radiation combined with higher levels of iodine the EPAQ found in Philadelphia’s water two months ago may be killing young babies here.

We’re reporting his research not to alarm or cause panic, but to inform. It’s enough time to suggest, not conclude yet. The real benefit is it is a red flag for more studies to be done.

For the administrator of the Portland Water Bureau, the decision Wednesday to drain 7.8 million gallons of drinking water from a Mount Tabor reservoir comes down to six words:

“Do you want to drink pee?” David Shaff asked.

About 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, water officials say, a 21-year-old Molalla man was caught on camera urinating in one of Portland’s uncovered reservoirs — one that provides water to a majority of Portlanders.

From a gross-out perspective, that’s enough to make residents wary of turning on the tap.

According to a report this week, Facebook lost nearly 6 million users in the U.S. in May. Facebook disputes the number, and yet it’s not implausible.

What Facebook user hasn’t thought of walking out?

Part of the problem with Facebook is how good it is at the thing it was invented to do, which is to put you in contact with people.

Contact with people turns out to be a mixed blessing. The more people you’re in contact with, the more people there are for you to disappoint, offend, annoy — and the other way around. Though Facebook entertains, diverts and sometimes educates, it also multiplies all the problems that come with relationships.

But that’s an old lament about Facebook. So is the sad truth that Facebook drains time that would be more productively used, say, practicing the mandolin.

The newer problem is that Facebook has come to feel like a stalker. Not only does it do kinky things with your personal data, its little blue F box is more intrusive and insistent every day.

The study found that today’s average new cable high-definition digital video recorders (HD-DVR) use more than half the energy of an average new refrigerator and more than an average new flat panel TV. Two-thirds of their total energy consumption – the equivalent annual energy output of six coal-burning power plants – occurs when they’re not in use.

In the Smithsonian Institution is a sixteenth-century automaton of a monk, made of wood and iron, 15 inches in height. Driven by a key-wound spring, the monk walks in a square, striking his chest with his right arm, raising and lowering a small wooden cross and rosary in his left hand, turning and nodding his head, rolling his eyes, and mouthing silent obsequies. From time to time, he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it. After over 400 years, he remains in good working order.

In the early years of the Iraq war, the U.S. military developed a technology so secret that soldiers would refuse to acknowledge its existence, and reporters mentioning the gear were promptly escorted out of the country. That equipment – a radio-frequency jammer – was upgraded several times, and eventually robbed the Iraq insurgency of its most potent weapon, the remote-controlled bomb. But the dark veil surrounding the jammers remained largely intact, even after the Pentagon bought more than 50,000 units at a cost of over $17 billion.

Robert Adams at first thought someone was playing a trick when he saw the plastic bag filled with money lying next to a news box in a suburban strip mall.

Adams told WGN-AM’s Greg Jarrett this morning that the bag sitting outside the Chase Bank branch in Rolling Meadow where he was headed late Monday afternoon to get some cash to buy a lunchtime burrito was filled with lots of bills–a little more than $17,000, as police later determined.

Human scum! At the entrance to Kengkou market, a person is roasting a live puppy!

Despite the corporate-driven hubbub surrounding the inevitability of “the cloud” replacing personal hard drives as the pre-eminent storage center for all web content, this system represents another dangerous trojan horse for the establishment to complete their agenda to regulate and shut down the free Internet.

Apple, Google and Amazon amongst other tech giants have all jumped on board with “the cloud,” a remote server network that allows users to store their data without using hard drives.

“It’s all part of a generational trend away from owning physical media content and towards renting media content from the computing universal cloud,” reports Investmentu.com.

However, despite the convenience of having all your files easily accessible in one place wherever you go, the drawbacks are ominous.

Last July, the defendant asked the victim to wait for him early in morning at a Netanya intersection. He picked her up in his car and drove her to the beach. There he told her that she is fated “to become the messiah’s mother,” and that she must “atone for all the bad deeds that she has done so far” by having sexual relations with him.

He then conducted a marriage ceremony with the girl while still in the car, and swore her to secrecy. At one point he asked her to take her clothes off, and assaulted her.

The driver apparently thought she was on a road while following her GPS unit just after midnight, but she was actually heading down the Sweyolocken boat launch.

It might be the ‘Land of the Free’, but some states certainly aren’t living up to the words of America’s national anthem.

New York, New Jersey and California are the least free in the U.S., based on an index of public policies affecting your individual freedoms.

The rankings are based economic, social and personal freedoms of Americans – and include measures such as taxes, government spending and regulations.

❒ Death at Bonnaroo music festival

Heat, drugs and alcohol can be a deadly combination at large summer music festivals like the Bonnaroo Festival Music & Arts that just wrapped in Manchester, Tenn., where a second death was reported Tuesday. Entertainment Weekly reports that a 24-year-old man died from hyperthermia, a condition that occurs when the body gets too hot and can’t cool itself. Temperatures at the festival were in the 90s, and large crowds of sweaty bodies probably didn’t help the situation.

A few days ago a 32-year-old woman was found dead at the festival’s camp grounds, but the cause of death is not known. In 2004 two men also died at Bonnaroo, which was then three years old, and were the first deaths to occur at that festival.

Bonnaroo isn’t the only outsize concert to have suffered casualties: In 2008, a 21-year-old man died of a drug overdose at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and in 2010 at least 19 people were killed in a stampede at the Love Parade festival in Germany.

A man “marries” a mannequin and wheels her on a walking tour of upstate New York.

The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death.

In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins.

Basement full of evil radioactive yellow water

❒ Brazilian boy dies from ‘poisoned cookies’

A 12-year-old boy died after eating cookies poisoned by two girls at his school in northeastern Brazil, police told AFP Tuesday.

The girls, aged 13 and 14, admitted putting a deadly dose of rat poison in the cookies, but claimed they were meant for two rival girls at their school on the outskirts of the city of Recife, the investigating officer, Mariana Villas Boas, said.

The boy, who was called to deliver the toxic cookies for them to allay suspicions, was not aware of the plan and ate them instead, with deadly result. He was taken to hospital in agony and died shortly afterwards.

“The boy died last Thursday after eating the poisoned biscuits,” Villas Boas said.

Sh*t Steaks And Turd Burgers – Now that’s what you call the ORGANIC part of a Green movement -ha

He says the biggest hurdle is the psychological barrier. you have to be shitting me!

Two men have been arrested in connection with a murder plot involving British singer Joss Stone. They were taken into custody in Devon, England, near Stone’s home, police have confirmed to BBC News.

The two unidentified men, ages 30 and 33, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder and rob the star. They were apprehended on Monday after a suspicious vehicle was seen in the Cullompton area and were initially arrested on “possession of offensive weapons and being equipped to steal.”

Once arrested, they were reportedly found in possession of swords, forensic-style overalls, plans of Stone’s house and a body bag. Police added that the singer is aware of the arrests, although it is not known if she was home at the time they were made.

Are you prepared to be yet again disappointed in and freaked out by the incompetence of TSA agents? Chicagoan Paul Kahan, a James Beard award winning chef and partner at the awesome restaurants Avec, Blackbird, Big Star and The Publican, managed to slip four of his massive chef knives through security at Chicago-O’Hare Airport. What happened then? Well, he took his flight like normal with four giant knives at easy reach.

This spirited dog has been participating in Greek riots since 2008. Everything you see is real and unaltered.

So it was doubly delicious to see Shepard Fairey flunk his first ordeal with the paparazzi, this bane of celebrity. After a decade of having his corporate brand enter our public space in the guise of a rebellious act, TMZ flaunted the liberty of public space exactly like Shepard Fairey has with glued up OBEY signage. The tables were turned and now instead of us, the public, forced to endure Fairey’s flaunting of the social contract with unwanted street art, it was the street art legend forced to endure scrutiny in a public space for our entertainment.

Organic is organic, or is it? It would seem that it is all a matter of perspective when one takes a stroll through the mountains of documents on the FDA and USDA websites.

The word “organic” is fast becoming a high-dollar money-maker for corporations smart enough to jump on the bandwagon and start marketing their products as “made with organic ingredients,” or “certified organic.” Even Monsanto is taking advantage of this burgeoning market, and people naïve enough to believe that what we have traditionally thought of as pure, organic food, is still that way, are being duped.

It makes perfect sense, however, in a Machiavellian sort of way. Flood the food supply with poisons, then lead people to believe that the only safe choice left is USDA Certified Organic. Then buy up the organic companies one by one, and start changing the “organic” rules from the inside out via the bought and paid for government agencies so that you can reap the profits from those trying to escape the poisons.

What consumers don’t know is that honey doesn’t usually come straight – or pure – from the hive. Giant steel drums of honey bound for grocery store shelves and the food processors that crank out your cereal are in constant flow through the global market. Most honey comes from China, where beekeepers are notorious for keeping their bees healthy with antibiotics banned in North America because they seep into honey and contaminate it; packers there learn to mask the acrid notes of poor quality product by mixing in sugar or corn-based syrups to fake good taste.

✱ Banksy is Dead

“If the man behind Banksy ever leaves the Banksy organization, or when he dies, will the public ever know? It’s possible that my grandchildren will be able to see “original” Banksy artwork completed a century from now. Banksy seems to have reached the absurd hyperbole of conceptual art: the original artist may not even need to conceive the artwork for it to bear his name. Banksy has finally achieved what Warhol and others set out to: the artist is truly a brand without a human identity.”

“Presently, one out of every 13 Georgia residents is under some form of correctional control,” Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, told state lawmakers during his inaugural address. “It cost about $3 million per day to operate our Department of Corrections. And yet, every day criminals continue to inflict violence on our citizens and an alarming number of perpetrators are juveniles.”

Fox News affiliate Fox 59 in Indianapolis, Indiana is searching for America’s next homeless star. Last week the station sent reporter Tisha Lewis out into the snow covered streets of downtown Indianapolis where she asked homeless people: “Do you have any talent?”

Fifteen decapitated bodies were found strewn outside an Acapulco shopping center Sunday and six more bodies were discovered in a taxicab as a bloody turf war rages in the resort city over control of drug shipment routes.

Heydar Moslehi, Iran’s intelligence minister, has said that his country has arrested more than 10 people under suspicions of espionage after the country infiltrated Israel’s “intelligence system”.

Tuesday’s announcement came a day after Iran’s intelligence services said that they had arrested suspects in the assassination a year ago of a nuclear physicist, in a months-long covert operation that they said led them to penetrate Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Iran blames Mossad for the murder of Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a Tehran University physics professor, who was killed by a bomb-rigged motorcycle that exploded outside his house as he was leaving for work in January 2010.

One of those arrested has appeared on Iranian television to apparently confess to the assassination of the nuclear physicist.

✱ Cindy Jacobs Blames Bird Deaths On DADT Repeal

Cindy Jacobs is a self-described prophet and evangelist who runs a ministry called Generals International. Her gig is something she called prophetic intercession, where she travels globally praying on behalf of others, or something. If you want to watch her, try TBN, 700 Club, or the “God Channel” (we were wondering when somebody would come up with that channel).

Recently, Cindy Jacobs has made a connection between the thousands of bird deaths and fish deaths and the recent repeal of DADT (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell). The clever Jacobs points out a few facts:

* DADT was originally spearheaded by a former governor of Arkansas (Bill Clinton)
* The recent governor of Arkansas is Mike Beebe
* President Obama signed DADT Repeal Act into law on December 22, 2010.
* More than 3,000 red-winged blackbirds died suddenly in Beebe, Arkansas
* Therefore: God is sending a sign that he is not happy about homosexuality (again)

A missile launcher was found in a Dumpster in Escondido on Friday afternoon, wrapped in plastic and surrounded by debris.
A worker found the missile launcher and reported it to authorities, who say they believe the launcher is an anti-tank weapon used by the Marine Corps and Army.

✱ Kid America and DJ Semen, ALIFE Orchard Street—Circa 2001.

Since hearing of the rampage, Tierney has been trying to figure out why Loughner did what he allegedly did. “More chaos, maybe,” he says. “I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what’s happening. He wants all of that.” Tierney thinks that Loughner’s mindset was like the Joker in the most recent Batman movie: “He fucks things up to fuck shit up, there’s no rhyme or reason, he wants to watch the world burn. He probably wanted to take everyone out of their monotonous lives: ‘Another Saturday, going to go get groceries’—to take people out of these norms that he thought society had trapped us in.”

Here is an archive of installments of I Saw It Advertised One Day, a recurring feature where we take a look at comic book advertisements from the past seventy plus years that amuse me for whatever reason!

The honey buns enter lockup the same way anyone else does: bound, escorted through halls and sally ports, and secluded in small boxes solely opened from the outside. From there the honey buns languish for days, maybe longer, until they’re gone.

They are a lowly, sturdy food designed for desperate cravings and vending machine convenience. They can endure weeks of neglect and even a mild mashing in a coat pocket or backpack. They are, it should come as no surprise, especially beloved by a similarly hardy but disrespected population: Florida’s prison inmates.

✱ Vegas Man Losing Weight With ‘Dog Food Diet’

Konowalski claims to have lost seven pounds in the first three days of his new diet, which consists of Milk Bones and organic canned dog food.

A malware-laced e-mail that spoofed seasons greetings from The White House siphoned gigabytes of sensitive documents from dozens of victims over the holidays, including a number of government employees and contractors who work on cybersecurity matters.